Children of the Outer Gods

Humanity was not meant to delve deeply into the eldritch secrets of the Mythos. While madness and insanity are the typical result of curiosity and exploration into these nightmare topics, some of the most fecund or contagious elements of the Mythos, such as experiments involving past life regression, certain transformative mutagens crafted by the serpentfolk, or the mere presence of Shub-Niggurath can cause twisting and distortion in the flesh as surely as the mind. These events can give rise to the vile and terrible transformations that warp curious unfortunates into outer mutants. Perhaps the most revolting method by which such monstrosities come to be lies with interbreeding between alien monstrosities and humanity. In some cases, the results of such crossbreeding are relatively stable, as in the case of the deep one hybrid or the satyr, but in most cases, particularly those involving impregnation via one of the Great Old Ones or Outer Gods, the result is always one of teratological terror.

Children of the Elder Beings are usually around human size, though they trend toward the larger end of the scale. In Lovecraft’s tale The Dunwich Horror, the interdimensional entity Yog-Sothoth fathers two children upon a wizard’s daughter. One of the children is able to pass for human, at least when wearing long pants and shirts that button up to the neck and wrists, though there is still obviously something wrong (at the age of 12, he stood 7 feet tall). The other child is an oft-invisible mix of tentacles and conjoined limbs bigger than an elephant.

These entities fall into three broad categories. First are the outer mutants, representing those hybrids in which the human side features most prominently. The outer spawn represent the other end of the spectrum: for instance, the colossal insect/octopus thing that appears at the end of The Dunwich Horror. Outer abominations fall between these two extremes into a sort of intermediate stage. Children of the Elder Beings often progress inevitably through these stages, from mutant to abomination to spawn, the transitions marked by awful trauma and burgeoning evil.

There is more to these beings than grotesque monstrosity. The Outer Gods spawn them not out of whim but to a purpose, and often a terrible one. Yog- Sothoth and the other Outer Gods seek constantly to break through into mortal planes for unthinkable purposes. These entities contact humans and other races (and can be contacted in return), and often mingle their own vile heritage with lesser beings. The result, in every case, is a distorted monstrosity, varying greatly in power and size.

This is the fundamental truth behind the outer mutants, abominations, and spawns: they constantly plot, scheme, and work toward opening gateways to bring the Outer Gods to the world to rule again and bring about the final apocalypse. They make ideal opponents for a horror-based campaign in which the heroes must stop them in order to save the world or universe itself.

An outer mutant is an individual who seems, at least externally, to be more human than outside. When heavily dressed to conceal their mutations, they can pass for human (or a member of whatever race the Outer God bred with to create them). Upon close inspection, however, the truth is easily revealed: tentacles, gills or fins, and hexagonal scales are just a few of the variations found among their kind.

Mutants always need to feed on blood and soul energy as well as normal provender, and typically have a secret proboscis or mouth somewhere on their body to drain this. Mutants don’t require much blood— not enough to kill their host—so they may rely on volunteers. Mutants grow rapidly, usually reaching the size of an adult human before the age of 5. By the age of 15, mutants can be 3 meters tall or more, and this growth does not stop throughout their lives.

Mutants develop the character traits of their “host race,” plus greatly enhanced intelligence and magic aptitude from the Elder Being that gave them life. Many cults adopt a mutant as their destined leader, dedicating themselves to guiding, training, and protecting the mutant. Some mutants are bred and raised in secret at the hands of a single insane magician—rather than a cult—who may or may not be that mutant’s mortal parent.

As a mutant continues to grow and gain experience, eventually it will transform into the next stage, the outer abomination. In most cases, a mutant devoutly desires this transformation, and will lead its gang of cultists on adventures and rituals to bring this about as quickly as possible.

Ecology

An outer mutant is still human enough to be able to disguise itself as human, with a heavy layer of clothing. Basically humanoid, they possess a human head, arms, and hands, and sometimes other parts. Beyond that, they begin to vary from their mundane source. They always have one or more feeding tendrils somewhere on their torsos. They are most humanoid near the top of their form, and decreasingly so lower down, where they may not be at all recognizable as mortal. Wilbur Whateley of the Dunwich Horror had dinosaur-like legs with circular padded disks for feet, eyes on his hips, and a ring of mouth-tipped proboscises like a belt around his body.

Regardless of their exact mutations, no mutant can pass for human while bare or otherwise revealed. The outer mutant presented here is a human cleric descended from Yog-Sothoth, only a few years old but already possessing the size and intellect of an adult man. While it has only started to gather its magical power, in short order this mutant will gain additional spellcasting levels and eventually transform into an outer abomination (see page 362 for statistics for this mutant as an abomination).

Creating an Outer Mutant

“Outer mutant” is an acquired template that can be added to any living, corporeal creature. An outer mutant retains the base creature’s statistics and special abilities except as noted here.

Challenge Rating: Base creature’s CR + 1

Type: The creature’s type changes to aberration (augmented). Do not recalculate its Hit Dice, base attack bonus, or saves.

AC: An outer mutant’s flesh is tough and alien in nature, granting it an increase of +4 to the base creature’s natural armor bonus.

Defensive Abilities: An outer mutant’s mind is twisted and warped. It is immune to confusion and insanity effects and gains a +2 bonus on all Will saves.

Attacks: An outer mutant retains all the natural weapons, manufactured weapon attacks, and weapon and armor proficiencies of the base creature. In addition, all outer mutants possess a stalked proboscis or mouth somewhere on their body that they can use to feed on blood. This extra limb functions as a bite attack and has the grab universal monster special ability. Damage for this bite depends on the outer mutant’s size (1d6 points of damage for a Medium outer mutant).

Special Attacks: An outer mutant has the following special attacks.

Feed (Ex): An outer mutant drains blood and spiritual essence via its bite. At the end of its turn, if it is grappling a foe, the outer mutant inflicts 1d2 points of Constitution damage (via the draining of blood from the victim) as well as 1d2 points of Wisdom damage (via siphoning spiritual energy and damaging the victim’s sanity).

Deformed (Ex): An outer mutant’s body is hideously deformed, but not completely so. Given time and an adequate disguise (typically baggy clothing) an outer mutant can pass for a member of the base creature’s race. An outer mutant suffers a –6 penalty on Disguise checks to appear as a creature of the base creature’s race. An outer mutant cannot wear armor unless the armor has been specifically crafted for its unique and unpleasant form.

Magical Adept (Ex): All outer mutants are adept at magic, increasing the save DC, if applicable, of any spell they cast by +1. An outer mutant can recall a prepared spell it cast in a previous round or regain a spell slot it expended in a previous round as a swift action up to three times per day.

Ability Scores: Outer mutants grow quickly, and as they grow, they tend to achieve larger sizes than the norm for the base creature. Typically, an outer mutant is a few feet larger than the base creature, but the oldest of them could well be larger than that, growing into new size categories. You can create older mutants like this by manually adjusting the mutant’s size or applying the giant creature simple template, but most mutants who survive this long instead transform into an outer abomination (see page 362). In any event, all outer mutants gain a +4 bonus to Constitution and Strength, and a +4 bonus to one mental ability score of their choice (the example outer mutant above chose Wisdom).

Skills: An outer mutant’s deformities bolster several of its skills. It gains Climb, Intimidate, Knowledge (any one), Perception, Sense Motive, Survival, and Swim as class skills and gains a +2 racial bonus on all of these skills.

Feats: An outer mutant gains Great Fortitude and Toughness as bonus feats.

Ecology

Special Abilities

Dread Curse (Sp) Three times per day, an outer abomination can call down the dread curse, causing coils of rippling, foaming magic to descend from above to strike foes. This spell-like ability functions like unholy blight, except that it affects creatures of any alignment and treats them all as good outsiders for the purpose of the spell effect. The dread curse inflicts 10d6 points of damage to all creatures in the area of effect and causes them to be permanently sickened. A successful DC 20 Will save halves the damage and reduces the duration of the sickened effect to 1d4 rounds. This is a curse effect, and the spell-like ability functions as a 5th-level spell.

Feed (Ex) An outer abomination drains blood and spiritual essence via its bite. At the end of its turn, if the abomination is grappling a foe, it inflicts 1d4 points of Constitution damage (via the draining of blood from the victim) and 1d4 points of Wisdom damage (via siphoning spiritual energy and damaging the victim’s sanity). Whenever an outer abomination kills a creature with its feed attack, it absorbs enough nutrients and soul energy to gain a growth point. Once an outer abomination earns a number of growth points equal to its current racial Hit Dice, it loses all growth points and gains a racial Hit Die. Once an outer abomination reaches 20 Hit Dice in this manner, it transforms into an outer spawn (see below). An outer abomination loses 1 growth point per day, so if it doesn’t constantly feed, it will never grow. A creature killed in this way cannot be brought back to life via raise dead, but more powerful effects like resurrection still work normally.

Every outer abomination is unique. However, in general they are still clearly derived from a humanoid form and are still in the process of eternal change. They have a face that buds from or is embossed upon some part of their upper body, and they usually still have hands and legs of a sort. Their evolving bodies often leave their inner organs open to the air, and they sprout tentacles or spawning sacs.

Outer abominations, like outer mutants and outer spawn are mortal/outside hybrids, descended from profane and perverse unions with Outer Gods. When these offspring reach the abomination stage of development, they can no longer pass for mortal creatures and grow quite large—up to 12 feet in height and a ton or more in weight.

Abominations are the “second level” of horror resulting from an Outer God producing offspring with a mortal creature. They are significantly larger and more physically powerful than outer mutants, with potent mental and magical abilities. However, their minds are far more alien than those of the comparatively tractable mutant and they rarely work well with humans, let alone lead them. Rather, cults tend to treat them more as objects of worship at best or dangerous guardian beasts at worst.

At the abomination stage, the creature can no longer pass as a normal person: their hideous malformations are plain to all. They still feed on blood and soul energy, as mutants do, but they require much larger quantities and typically drain victims dry, rather than just tapping a target for a few pints at a time. Cults often use abominations as a convenient means to sacrifice victims to their Outer God master (usually but not always the abomination’s parent), since they cannot afford to let the abominations feed on their numbers.

An abomination grows steadily until eventually it can transform itself into an Outer Spawn.

Ecology

Special Abilities

Apotheosis (Su) When an outer spawn reaches 100 growth points, it undergoes apotheosis. If this occurs during a proper ritual performed by a cult or spellcaster that focuses the energies, the outer spawn transforms into a unique and powerful avatar of its parent Outer God. Such creatures are equal in power to a Great Old One and are unique and varied in their abilities. If an outer spawn achieves apotheosis when not under the effects of this eldritch ritual, it instead splits apart into dozens (1d20+40) of human-sized outer mutants equal in shape and power to the mutant the original began its life as.

Dread Curse (Sp) Three times per day, an outer spawn can call down the dread curse, causing coils of rippling, foaming magic to descend from above to strike foes. This spell-like ability functions as unholy blight, but it affects creatures of any alignment and treats them all as good outsiders for the purpose of the spell effect. The dread curse inflicts 10d6 points of damage to all creatures in the area of effect and causes them to be permanently sickened. A successful DC 20 Will save halves the damage and reduces the duration of the sickened effect to 1d4 rounds. This is a curse effect, and the spell-like ability functions as a 5th-level spell.

Feed (Ex) An outer spawn drains blood and spiritual essence via its bite. At the end of its turn, if it is grappling a foe, it inflicts 1d6 points of Constitution damage (via the draining of blood from the victim) and 1d6 points of Wisdom damage (via siphoning spiritual energy and damaging the victim’s sanity). Whenever an outer spawn kills a creature with its feed attack, it absorbs enough nutrients and soul energy to gain a growth point. Once an outer spawn earns 100 growth points, it undergoes apotheosis (see above). An outer spawn loses 1 growth point per day, so if it doesn’t constantly feed, it will never reach apotheosis. A creature killed in this way cannot be brought back to life via raise dead, but more powerful effects like resurrection still work normally.

Vulnerable to Dimensional Lock (Ex) When an outer spawn is prevented from using teleportation effects, such as when within an area of forbiddance or under the effects of dimensional lock, its damage reduction and energy resistances are halved and its regeneration is suppressed.

Yog-Sothoth and other Outer Gods such as Shub-Niggurath and Nyarlathotep are able to produce hybrids that vary greatly in power and size. The outer spawn are typically the most powerful such entities encountered in the normal planes of reality.

The outer spawn is close to its ultimate form, and the traces of its former humanity are few and far between. Often it still has a face or parts of a face, spread across parts of its upper body. Its limbs have become insectoid or tentacular, rather than human arms or legs. It typically resembles a centipede, octopus, or spider creature with traces of the human form threaded through. Outer spawn are huge, reaching the size of an elephant or dinosaur and weighing 10 tons or more.

This is the penultimate “third level” of outer/human hybridization, which has neared the ultimate goal of bringing its parent Outer God to the world physically. An outer spawn is enormous—elephantine in size—and typically always invisible. Like a mutant or abomination, an outer spawn also drains blood and soul energy, but an abomination may need more. The ravenous nature of the outer spawn is alien and terrifying: it can often eat more food at a sitting than its entire body mass, and only its interdimensional nature can explain such a paradox. As its hunger can consume entire herds of cattle or dozens of victims per week, when a cult is trying to maintain its “pet” outer spawn, its activities become increasingly hard to conceal. Worse, when the cult cannot continue feeding its spawn (as they often fail to do), the monster eventually breaks out of containment and rampages across the countryside.

The Purpose of an Outer Spawn

The ultimate fate of a spawn inevitably takes one of two forms, assuming it is not destroyed by intrepid adventurers or an army sent by the local authorities. First, the cult or wizard which fostered the spawn wants it to mature and reach apotheosis, that it might bring an avatar of its parent Outer God bodily into the world. This process takes time, energy, and a huge amount of food, and the proper rituals must be performed. Secondly, if these rituals are not performed—if the spawn is alone when it reaches its apotheosis, for instance—instead of becoming the Outer God, it splits into a host of outer mutants, equal in total mass to itself.

Thus, a 6-ton spawn might become 50 or 60 human-sized mutants, which provide the core of a new cult—or a small army to conquer one. Sometimes, these newly born mutants manifest in various places around the world, infiltrating a number of cities or kingdoms. In this way, the cycle begins anew.

Theoretically, each mutant can go on to become a spawn again given the chance to grow. These mutants typically see each other as siblings or multiple aspects of the Outer God who gave them life. They consider themselves allies in accomplishing the purpose of summoning their Outer God parent, though they can also work against each other as rivals. They compete to determine the one most worthy of accomplishing this purpose, while those proven unworthy become food for the chosen mutant.